


Modern AU Drabbles

by canyouseemyspark



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Study, Divorce, F/M, Falling In Love, Father-Daughter Relationship, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Infidelity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 00:13:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2752361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canyouseemyspark/pseuds/canyouseemyspark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of modern AU drabbles, all set in the same verse. Might eventually be turned into a multi-chaptered fic.</p><p>Accepting prompts in the comments and on <a href="http://spottswood.tumblr.com">tumblr</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Edric/Shireen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loosely inspired by an excerpt from this poem by Frank O'Hara:
> 
> _ oh god it's wonderful  
> to get out of bed  
> and drink too much coffee  
> and smoke too many cigarettes  
> and love you so much _

It leaves her uneasy, seeing Edric like this, walking around Uncle Robert’s sprawling townhouse, through immaculate rooms decorated with the bizarre art that Aunt Lyanna collected and which Shireen knew cost a fortune from her father’s grumbling, living within these walls and slipping into this skin as though he belongs here. She feels guilty for thinking that, remembering how many late-night phone calls they had when she was still living in Berkeley and he would talk to her about her day and her classes and the weather and wait until their voices got sleepy before he would tell her about one of her cousins’ – his half siblings’ – soccer games or birthday parties or graduation dinners that he wasn’t invited to, and all the while she would hear the click click of his computer and know that he was poring over Facebook pictures of it. She would reassure him then that he deserved it all too, deserved to be part of their family, and each time he would only sigh, and tell her how late it’s gotten and that he would call her tomorrow. 

It makes her feel uneasy because she had gotten so used to his dorm room, waking up in the mornings when he had let her take his bed and seeing him sleeping on his couch, his arm thrown over his eyes to keep out the sun streaming in from the windows, the bed sheets he taped up instead of blinds having long since fallen off. She loved those days, when she would be back in town for the weekend and they would lie around and watch daytime television and eat week old leftovers from his fridge.

Here, Uncle Robert and Aunt Lyanna had a private chef on call and their place was too close to her father’s that Shireen couldn’t justify spending the night.

Here, they spent every awkward and uncomfortable Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas until her and her cousins had been old enough to protest and Uncle Renly moved to Europe. Edric had lived with them then and each holiday her father had sent him to his mom’s, until high school when Edric started playing them against each other, telling his mother he was staying with his uncle and his uncle he was going to his mother’s, and doing god knows what instead. It hadn’t been until his senior year that he was caught, and he left for college a year later anyway and it seemed no one cared where he went anymore.

It leaves her uneasy then to see him in this home, and although he looks as though he belongs here, _really_ , she wonders what made her uncle and aunt have a change of heart and let him.

“Don’t you hate it here? The paintings, the vases, the no TV. It’s like a museum,” Shireen calls loudly, watching from her spot on the couch as he stands out on the terrace, his coat collar popped up to keep the cold off while a lit cigarette hangs from his mouth. He bounces on the balls of his field to keep warm, and it makes her smile.

Edric takes a long last drag, his face twisted as the snowflakes hit his face, and Shireen can’t tell if he’s smiling or frowning, “They have working heat and no bed bugs, I can’t complain.” He puts his cigarette out, careful to throw it off the ledge instead of leaving it on the floor and comes inside, closing the French doors behind him, “Movie time?”

It’s their tradition every holiday season, making popcorn over the stove and watching Home Alone, and within half an hour they’re sitting on the couch with her laptop propped up on the coffee table and it’s cold and he’s covered him with her sweater and she can smell his smell and feel his breathing and his voice is in her ear when he jokes and she wishes they could spend every holiday like this. _A real family,_ she thinks, but that doesn’t sound quite right. 

But then a key starts jiggling in the door and he shoots up from his seat, and she’s never seen him so frightened before.

She laughs, but it comes out a weak and confused sound, “What’s the matter with you?”

“I have to go, Shireen,” And he’s grabbing the sweater off her and running into the kitchen to take his duffle off the counter and bounding down the stairs leading to the back door, “I’ll call you later okay? Don’t be mad.”

He’s gone one moment and the next her aunt is halfway down the foyer, impeccably well-dressed as always with her baby bump stretching out a little further in front of her than the last time Shireen saw her, except she’s lugging two huge suitcases and has a backpack thrown over her shoulder and a scowl across her face. Aunt Lyanna looks shocked for a second when she sees Shireen standing in her living room, but it quickly changes to a polite smile.

“Shireen, what a lovely surprise!” The bags drop with a thud on the floor and her aunt is pressing a kiss to her cheeks, “The driver is with your uncle and cousins taking the things out of the car, they’ll be so happy to see you!”

She’s shell-shocked for a minute, but thinks of Edric and the lie comes out instantly, “My dad wanted me to pick up some files for him but I didn’t want to get caught out in the storm so I was waiting it out.”

“Speaking of the storm!” Her aunt begins, moving into the kitchen, her voice growing fainter, “Our flight was delayed for 36 hours? 36! We decided to save Spain for next year, the kids just couldn’t take it anymore.”

It makes sense now, it all makes sense, logically at least, _rationally_. Edric, who saw his father once a year, who was born three years into his father’s marriage, the marriage his birth had nearly ripped apart, sitting at their dinner table, opening presents with his siblings under the tree, logically, rationally, Shireen knew it could never happen. He was staying here because being close to his father’s things, in the home that should have been his, was better at least than being alone, or worse still he couldn’t make his rent and had nowhere else to stay.

 _He belongs here_ , Shireen thinks, _he belongs somewhere_ , and tries to remember his smell and the feel of his breathing and the warmth of his voice in her ear. 


	2. Jon/Val

Ghost went missing on Jon’s third day in the city. His dog was used to wandering off, used to the acres of land his family had in Michigan and Illinois, and even when he disappeared for days, Jon would know that he would find his way into a barn and sleep with the other animals, or that one of their neighbors would recognize him and let him in their home. He never worried, knew that Ghost would always find his way home.

But things were different in New York.

He’d graduated three months ago now, spent his mornings job hunting and the rest of his days sitting on the couch eating the brownies Sansa would make for her friends and playing video games with Robb, but Robb had left for an internship in Chicago with their father and he couldn’t stay in that house anymore, not his siblings would be starting school soon anyway and his stepmother would be the only one left. So he did the only impulsive thing he’d ever done in his life, called up his Uncle Benjen, packed his things away in the trunk of the old Camry he had bought junior year after working a summer in the Ryswells’ stables, and drove to the city with Ghost in the back seat. When his father found out, he’d made a half hearted offer to get him a place at the law firm with Robb but Jon knew that was never meant him. Robb was going to take over the practice, and Jon, well, he would just have to figure things out for himself.

Nothing ever worked out the way he thought it would though.

Uncle Benjen lived in a loft in Brooklyn overlooking the East River with beautiful views and barely enough room to walk, and Jon loved him for that, knowing that he had the choice to join the firm but decided to choose his own path, working as a public defender for the city instead. His uncle was patient with him but after the first few weeks of him coming home from work every day to find Jon sitting with Ghost in the kitchen looking through job postings online, his boxes and suitcases crowding the living room, his patience had started to run out.

Jon started wandering the city then, trying to get out of his uncle’s way when he knew he would be at the apartment, and always ended up at Central Park. It reminded him of home, the smell of the trees and the snow crunching beneath his feet, the cold having driven most of the thin-skinned New Yorkers back inside so some days it seemed like it was just him and Ghost in the whole city. It helped him clear his head, to keep the anxiety at bay when he started to think about what would happen if New York failed, if he had to go back home. When he started thinking of his mother again, wondering if he could find out where she was, if she would take him in, he knew it was starting to get bad.

It was in their second week that Ghost disappeared, taking off across the park to follow a squirrel, and Jon hadn’t been able to catch sight of him no matter how fast he ran. That night he walked through the park until midnight, until his feet felt like stones and his face half frozen, slept in his car and hoped it would be like all those other times, that Ghost would find his way back. He couldn’t call his uncle, knew that he would tell his father and everyone would know what a failure he was, how incapable of living alone, of taking care of himself.

By the morning he started to panic, felt tears stinging his eyes for the first time in months, printed flyers off at the public library and pasted them to what seemed like every tree and lighting pole, even handing them out to tourists lining up for the horse-drawn carriage rides. He stayed around the park, didn’t want to even consider the thought that Ghost might have left and was roving the streets of the city, dodging between cars and pedestrians, digging for scraps to eat.

On the third day, more depressed than he could ever remember being, feeling disgusting in his dirty clothes and wet socks but more disgusted in himself for getting Ghost in his mess, tempted to call Robb just to hear his voice, he saw  _her._

She came through the trees, wearing an outfit that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else – white snow boots and white jeans, and huge white parka with a white scarf wrapped around her neck – but that left her looking like some angel, as corny as he knew it was, some princess or heiress that was skiing the slopes of some Swiss chalet. He didn’t think he’s ever seen a woman so beautiful, and then Ghost comes out of the trees behind her and he notices one of his flyers in her hands and feels himself smile for the first time since he got to the city.

 _They look like they belong together_ , and then Ghost bounded towards him, licking his face and knocking him to the ground.

He felt the woman standing over him.

“I guess this is your dog,” And he could tell she’s smiling from the sound of her voice, “What’s my reward?”


	3. Arianne/Viserys

The storm fucked everything up.

Not only had Arianne just suffered through a miserable five and a half hour flight from Los Angeles to New York, sitting in coach beside a guy who had the balls to ask her if he could borrow her headphones as soon as the plane took off, but she was stuck in New York, delayed until god knows when because of the blizzard. And she _still_ had to get on a ten-hour flight to Rome and catch a three-hour flight to Beirut after that.

The airport was in complete anarchy, travelers dragging their suitcases and parents lugging their children from gate to gate, information desk to information desk, all the while the same Christmas carols played on repeat from the loudspeakers. From where she sat at the bar of one of those overpriced airport restaurants that served inedible food she could see a teenage girl sobbing on her cellphone about how her flight got cancelled and she would miss Christmas dinner as a Delta staff member stood awkwardly by. Arianne rolled her eyes, considering giving up on her sparkling water and getting something stronger instead, but the idea of being a drunken mess in the airport for the rest of the night and being hungover by the time she landed wasn't very appealing.

She takes out her book instead, a thriller set in a fictional Eastern European metropolis that she’d seen on Quentyn’s Goodreads, zones out entirely and by the time she finishes the book and looks up, it’s 2 in the morning and _finally_ the airport is quiet.

It’s not for lack of people. Most people are sleeping at their gates now, tired out from the blustering and crying most likely, and the lights are dimmed, even the incessant repeat of carols seeming quieter. It’s then that she notices him, sitting across her from the bar, a pair of thick-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, silver hair pulled back in a bun and eyes fixed on his laptop as his fingers clicked away.

She’d never met Viserys Targaryen but knew it was him on first look. He was in enough of Aegon and Rhaenys’ pictures for her to spot him, and looked so much like her aunt’s husband must have looked twenty years ago. The eyes were almost the same and so were his features, but Viserys did not have the sameunearthly _perfection_ his older brother did. He was slender where his brother was broad, thinner in the face too, and with a splattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks. He didn’t dress with the same grace his brother did either though he stuck to the same color palette, wearing a black sweater and black jeans, a pair of tattered sneakers on his feet. 

There was something about him, something she couldn't put her finger on that peaked her curiosity. Aegon and Rhaenys both adored him, probably because he was closer in age to them to be more of a sibling than an uncle. He was a sculptor or some other ridiculous occupation that only a Targaryen trust fund could support but he had a day job too if she remembered correctly, part of Rhaegar's book publishing business, the only thing that survived after their family's political aspirations were most certainly dead and buried. Elia spoke highly of him too and she remembered her aunt and her father plotting for her to spend a summer in New York when she was a teenager enrolled in some art class at Columbia with him though her mother hadn't allowed it. Before she would have rebelled at her father's choices for her, but Arianne was twenty-five now and her own decisions sure as hell weren't working out for her.

Taking her hair down from its ponytail, Arianne left her seat, walking over to his side of the bar.

“Viserys Targaryen?” She asked tentatively, smiling as he sat back startled, pushing his glasses up with the back of his hand.

“Do I know you?”

His voice was different from Rhaegar’s too, softer and less accented.

“Yes,” And when his confusion only deepened, “Well, not directly. I’m Arianne Martell, I’m your sister in law’s niece. I think we’re headed to the same place actually.”

He surprised her by smiling back, closing the screen from his laptop on, getting up from his seat and shaking her hand. Then he was back in his seat, motioning for her to sit beside him. It was a strange gesture but coming from him, somehow endearing.

“It’s nice to meet you, I’ve heard a lot about you from Rhae and Aegon,” He breathed, seemingly embarrassed by the confession, “I was looking forward to finally spending Christmas with you and your family…” – and with an anxious look around the terminal – “If we ever make it.”

In truth, Arianne and her family had never celebrated Christmas until Aunt Elia and her family moved to Beirut. Uncle Oberyn told her that Rhaegar allowed it, allowed his wife anything to be honest, in those years after the affair no one talks about anymore when he was only desperate to have his family back. His career was in tatters anyway after everything that happened so following his wife back to her country wasn’t as hard of a sacrifice as it might have been before. He wanted the kids to keep their religion though, so their families learned to celebrate both sets of holidays, the Christian and the Muslim.

As if on cue their gate lit up, one of the representative from the airline turning on the microphone and announcing they’ll begin the boarding process soon. Arianne stands up and Viserys rises too, the both of them navigating awkwardly around each other until his head hits something hanging from the bar and they look up to see a line of plastic mistletoe decorations above them.

Boldly, Arianne grabbed his ticket off the bar top.

“Let’s go see if we can get your seat changed.”


End file.
